Seattle-Area Theater Will Encourage Texting During Performances

If you’re the type of audience member who feels the need to make the performance a sideshow to your nonstop texting and social network updating, you might want to make plans to move to the Seattle area by 2014. A theater there that’s slated to open that year will embrace technological obsession rather than discourage it, encouraging customers to text during shows.

The theater’s executive director tells The New York Times that “simply forbidding it and embarrassing people is not the way to go,” and that he hopes the policy will help draw young audiences.

Construction plans call for the theater’s design to facilitate cell phone reception with an antenna as tall as 14 feet. The strong signals should make the theater more attractive as a corporate rental during the day.

The test will be to see how much cell phone use manners and social decorum will allow the audience to get away with.